I final got around to marathon watching “The Pacific” that Sean loaned to me what seems like ages ago. I have to say liked it more than I had expected since I had read some poor reviews of it. Rather than go into the BD details Blu-ray.com has an excellent write-up:

First one big caveat, I did fast forward though some parts, mostly some of the home front stuff, and liberty time in Australia. Some of the home front stuff was quite relevant to the story but other parts were just separate story arcs I had no interest in. In fairness I’ve have never watch “Band of Brothers” in its entirety since my first watching.

What I did like about it? Well it’s about the Corps for starters. Though I have also served in the Army it’s different, at least now days. You join the army whereas you become a Marine, really now better way I can put it. I’ve also spent a lot of time in the Pacific on Okinawa (been to some of the battlefields) and other places mostly not shown. Much of the movie also looked very familiar because when I was in the Corps a lot of our equipment dated to WWII and/or was still the same design as used then (this was the early 80s mind you).

I also liked that fact that they didn’t start each episode with a real person relating their story. That sort of ruined some of the suspense in “Band of Brothers”(BoB) since you know for sure certain people live. In “The Pacific” I only knew whether 2 of the reoccurring characters lived or died because of learning Marine Corps history. Another thing I liked is that although there were story arcs that didn’t interest me there were no stand-alone episodes, BoB had a couple of them which IMO detracted from the main storyline.

I also liked that “The Pacific” is told from a Grunts POV as opposed to and Officers POV in BoB.

Well I did it and mentioned BoB which brings up the inevitable is it as good. Well IMO yes it is. I won’t say better since I skipped some of the boring parts but I would tend to lean in that direction. Be warned that they are however, very different stories. Whereas BoB probably leaves most people feeling a bit uplifted or at least patriotic, “The Pacific” is more of an anti-war show in the sense that the only good thing about it is not being in one. However, from a purely storytelling perspective I would say I prefer “The Pacific” to Bob.